It's been up and down for me too for the last few days. According to the Radio NZ story from last week on it, spark staff aren't commenting publicly about it, which could be why after 7 pages, they haven't bothered to post anything. Gary McCormack from the radio nz story, was apparently sending them a bill for the time wasted. I think if they have an on going problem with their spark yahoo email service, they should acknowledge it. To have this many outages and problems so often would indicate either an ongoing problem, or a very low quality service, if they consider it to be normal.

the issues are out of Sparks control. Yahoo's Email product is a dog everyone knows this.. it cant be changed over night, the service is provided FREE for residential use "SO MANY PEOPLE USE IT FOR BUSINESS" provided at "best effort"

Not true, its is part of their home internet package. If they had never offered email, so many Telecom home users would have signed up withanother ISP.

Now heres the thing they need to realiseif you decide not to use xtra/yahoo email, then you really dont need "Spark" as an ISP or home ph provider, there are better options.As soon as home users move away from xtra/yahoo email, the next step for them change ISP & home ph provider .

l43a2: the issues are out of Sparks control. Yahoo's Email product is a dog everyone knows this.. it cant be changed over night, the service is provided FREE for residential use "SO MANY PEOPLE USE IT FOR BUSINESS" provided at "best effort"

It's been an ongoing problem now for months, if not a year, so they have had plenty of time to get it fixed permanently . It isn't outside their control, they can move to another supplier, and they had the choice to do this last year I believe after they reviewed it, but chose to stay with their supplier. They have chosen to subcontract out the service, so they have to take responsibility for any subcontracted out services. It is not as though telecom customers are able to contact yahoo directly anyway for support on it. They should take ownership of the problem, and come up with a solution. It is also not a free service, it is part of many peoples connection. Also some people who don't have an internet connection pay I believe $20 per month (I stand to be corrected on the actual amount, as it used to be $5 but went up) for a xtra email address these days. Also services with ongoing faults are not fit for purpose under the CGA, as they must be free from ongoing problems. You do contradict yourself though because you first say the service is a dog, and then it is 'best effort' . If it is a dog, then it can hardly be 'best effort', especially if it is a poorer quality service with more outages than most other paid and free providers out there. I

Agreed it absolutely isn't a free service, and near-daily failures can't be called "best effort" if Spark is to be considered competent (or even any more than an elaborate scam, since it's illegal to con people into paying for something they can't use). Take it a step further and they could argue you're paying $80/mo for the pure joy of exposure to their happy marketing, with all the actual services provided "free" - that would never hold water in a court (no matter how close to the truth it may be...).

I understand how they got into the position they are in now, but I fail to understand how they can't get themselves out of it.

CGA will come into play, surely.I and many others stick with Telecom , paying higher than market pricing, JUST so I can keep the @xtra email adress That was part of the deal when I signed up many many years ago, I now have become reliant on it .

So since yahoo/xtra email isnt 100% 'fit for purpose' surely telecom home internet users are due a partial refund.Its time for the commerce commission to get involved.

Telecom need to be forced to start offering partial refunds (watch how quick things would change if that ever happened)

If the Xtra email was truley 'free' , then Telecom wouldnt charge for that service when users change ISP & want to keep the xtra email open.